1. Field of the Invention
Embodiments of the present invention generally relate to managing digital microscopy images and, more specifically, to a method and apparatus for navigating stacked microscopy images.
2. Description of the Related Art
In digital microscopy, whole-slide images often take the form of a Z-stack, which is a collection of images, each image taken with a different focus depth. Digital microscopy utilizes virtual slide systems having automated digital slide scanners that create a digital image file of an entire glass slide. The digital image file is referred to as a whole-slide image, which, in some embodiments, has a spatial resolution of approximately 100,000 pixels by 100,000 pixels. Therefore, Z-stacks are generally large sized data sets. Due to the large size of Z-stacks, navigation of Z-stacks becomes cumbersome and time consuming. For high magnification, capturing images for several slices of the specimen may be necessary to ensure in-focus capture of the specimen. For example, 32 to 64 images may be required. Browsing and analyzing a 3-D data set of an example size of 100,000×100,000×64 pixels becomes a cumbersome task for an operator.
Thus, there is a need for method and apparatus for navigating stacked microscopy images.